Two Questions to Ask After Each Project is Completed

Know what the biggest difference is between an adequate project manager and a great project manager? The great project manager always learns from every project and applies that learning to the next project.

Here’s a simple technique to help you learn from every project too. After each project completion, before you send the project team members on to other things, get all of the project principals together and have a postmortem review. You can kick around as many ideas as you like during the review, but make sure you answer these two questions:

What did we do right that we want to make sure we do again in the next project?

What could we do better next time?

In each question, the wording is critical.

What did we do right?
Most postmortem project reviews dwell on the negative, but in all of the projects I’ve seen — even the project disasters — there were always a few things that were done right. It’s important to recognize those things because unless we specifically emphasize them on the next project, there’s a strong likelihood that they won’t be repeated. Overemphasis on negatives in a project review is counterproductive. Everyone walks away from the review with a bad attitude, and no one really learns anything. By stressing the positives, the project team can reinforce the good things that were done, and the team members can leave the review with an upbeat attitude.

What could we do better?
Of course it’s important to learn from project mistakes as well, but it’s too late for blame. Don’t focus on what went wrong — instead focus on how things could be done differently to make them more successful. There’s a subtle difference here. If you talk about things that went wrong, then people get defensive and even antagonistic. But if you recognize the things that went wrong only as a jumping off point to generating ideas for doing things better, then the defensiveness is defused, and team members honestly look for better ways to prevent that kind of mistake on the next project. Even though the bad things that happened on the project come up in the review, the review team doesn’t dwell on them, and so the result is more upbeat and positive.

This works for meetings and events too
I’ve used the same two-question review after a long meeting and after a special offsite event. By asking the two questions at the very end of the meeting or event, we were able to generate a lot of ideas for future improvement, and we ended on an up note. Everyone likes improvement — we just don’t want it to come at our own personal expense. Approaching improvement in this way makes the process much easier to accept, and everyone walks away encouraged.

And that’s how progress is made: reinforce the good things, and figure out ways to improve upon the bad things.

Emergencies Aren’t Strategy In a previous article I talked about how there are two reasons for strategy: focus and communication. It seems like companies have a lot of trouble with focus. Particularly in large companies, there’s a tendency...

Fixing Broken Windows (not the Microsoft kind) A few weeks ago there was an article in an Atlanta newspaper about George Kelling, the author of the book, Fixing Broken Windows: Restoring Order and Reducing Crime in Our Communities. Dr. Kelling has been...

4 Reasons We Disagree, and What to Do About It You’re trying to get a new project approved, and you’re having trouble. Or you’re trying to get an employee to do things your way, and the employee keeps fighting you. Both these situations are disagreements,...

IT Governance is Like Pushing a Rope IT governance has been getting a lot of attention lately in the press. Frankly, it bothers me, since I think that a focus on IT governance is misguided. Four years ago I wrote an article...

4 Advantages of a Portable Expert In my previous post I defined the term “Portable Expert” and I described the two secrets that make portable expertise possible. In this post I’ll give you some examples of portable expertise from my own...

Taking Shadow IT Out of the Shadows, Part 1 Shadow IT is one of the names for the Information Technology work and expense that’s done outside of the control of the formal IT organization and outside the formal IT budget. It’s more prevalent in...

By continuing to use the site, you agree to the use of cookies. more information

The cookie settings on this website are set to "allow cookies" to give you the best browsing experience possible. If you continue to use this website without changing your cookie settings or you click "Accept" below then you are consenting to this. For more information on the use of cookies on this web site, see http://blog.makingitclear.com/cookies/